How to Make Money with a Blog
Blogging has become an immensely popular tool for doing business in recent years. Blogging used to be akin to a personal diary that was published online for the world to see. However, nowadays businesses of all manners and sizes use blogs to drive traffic and promote products. Also, there’s now a thriving community of professional bloggers. These people have turned blogging into a business, where they publish posts to essentially make a living.
So, how do they do it? Can you make money blogging? Most blogging platforms are free to use. Bloggers also don’t have subscription services like magazines require to generate revenue. So, it truly is interesting how bloggers, who offer their services for completely free, make money.
Thanks to advertising technology, making a living by blogging is entirely possible. However, not all bloggers turn their blogs into successful money-making ventures. Blogging for money is sort of an art. Let’s look at several tried and tested ways that you too can make money by blogging:
Focus on a Niche
If you want to make money by blogging, you have to think of it as a business. And just like a business, your blog will have the best chance of succeeding if it is unique. Therefore, do not choose generic topics to blog about. Consider any of the top money making blogs; they are all focused on a single unique topic. Likewise, find a niche for your blog. Pick a topic that is rarely covered by other bloggers, or better yet, not covered at all.
Before your blog can generate any revenue, it needs followers; a lot of followers who visit several times a week and interact with the site. In order to gain tens of thousands of such followers, you need to publish posts ideally several times a day. Do not allow your blog to go without a new post for more than 20 hours. It’s extremely important in the beginning to keep churning out new material to remain relevant. The more you publish, the more likely your blog will attract attention.
Tailor Your Posts to a Specific Audience
Once your blog starts attracting readers in droves, it’s time to make money from online ads. There’s an important fact about online advertisement that bloggers should be aware of: advertisers prefer specific audiences. For example, if your blog mostly attracts professional women in their thirties, you will be able to charge a lot of money from advertisers. However, if the target audience highly varies and can only be called a general audience, your blog will be less appealing to advertisers. The best way to attract more readers of a certain group is to write for that group. For example, if you are looking for ways on how to start a blog, first decide for whom you are writing. Do you want TV critics to read your blog, or young male viewers? The ad revenue will depend on the audience.
Guest Post
If you are an unknown blogger, you will struggle to find new readers. The best method to overcome this hurdle is to make yourself visible on blogs that are already popular. Publish guest posts on popular blogs with links to your own. Your blog can certainly benefit from the traffic that these sites get.
Building a money-making blog from scratch is not easy. You will have to spend a considerable amount of time each week developing your blog. Use these tactics to make your blog suitable for generating profits.